Teaching with Moodle

Thanks Andrew for your excellent feedback - more to come I hope 

Just for anyone who might have missed this, Moodle HQ is running a free MOOC on the basics of teaching with Moodle for non-technical types (like me) and you can still join here: Learn Moodle We are just at the end of the first week (of 4)

To respond to your points:

• Interesting thought about moving the videos to the top of the pages. As a text person myself, I first thought of text and I didn't want people to think there was only a video (and not scroll down to the text) so I guess I did/thought the opposite of what occurred to you! Based on your comment,s I think if we run the MOOC again -which we do hope to do - I will use a short intro paragraph at the start, mentioning there is more text underneath the video - a sort of compromise.
• I haven't heard from anyone stuck with navigating through the book yet, but it is something I can mention in the live launch in a possible rerun of the MOOC. I mention the books with their text and videos so I could add a slide to explain how to move from one page to another - or, as you say, add a note at the bottom of the pages.
• In terms of the survey and the quiz, we had a long discussion before the first MOOC in 2013 about how much information to give new participants about what activity they were doing and why. Initially we added extra explanatory text about each activity but it was felt it was too much - information overload - and so we settled instead for identifying each activity in the title (Quiz: Week 1 or Choice: Previous experience with Moodle) on the understanding that if people watched the live sessions or went through the video tutorials or text they would find out what these words (Quiz/Choice) meant in Moodle. 

Andrew, I tend to agree with your point on the value of the quiz for week 1. However, the quiz content for week 1 was excellent and very relevant to Moodle. 

Mary, perhaps for the next MOOC we can draft content about how people found out about Learn Moodle, if they are aware of certain Moodle services, Moodle Partners and social networks - using the opportunity for market research. 

My thoughts on week 2 to integrate or disregard according to your own judgement

https://learn.moodle.net/mod/page/view.php?id=28068
The 40 minute video seems a bit much. Although it wasn't a self paced course when I did it this course (https://www.coursera.org/learn/calculus1/outline) takes a different approach that I really like. Most videos are in the 3-10 minute range and are all about a single topic.

Multiple short videos means that the student can easily refer back to a particular video instead of trying to finding a point within a long video, its easy for me to know where I am up to if I have to shut down my computer and come back another day and I get a small "task complete" emotional pay off by finishing a video and having multiple small videos lets me get that more often.

Given all that consider splitting out and pre-recording specific videos about individual topics being covered while reducing the live component. The scripted portions don't need to be live while Q&A does. Perhaps each week release the new week's pre-recorded videos and then, a few days later, do a live session that is solely to answer questions.

In "Book: How can I help my learners learn?" (https://learn.moodle.net/mod/book/view.php?id=28069&chapterid=4080) perhaps the glossary and the filter pages should be last. It feels slightly odd to be going through the activity types and to take a side trip to learn about filters before returning to activities.

Perhaps the activity description for https://learn.moodle.net/mod/glossary/view.php?id=28070 should explicitly mention that these terms will be automatically turned into links anywhere else they appear by the glossary filter. This was stated in the book activity but may bear repeating.

I don't believe the glossary video actually showed the glossary filter working. I am harping on about the glossary filter a bit but its something that doesn't make much sense until you see it work and then it becomes obvious.

I am really confident that I did the week 1 quiz but now it is saying that I have not done it. Maybe I just spaced out and shut the browser before finishing it or something. Has anyone else reported problems?

Great Feedback Andrew. I agree with many of your points:

• I too found it frustrating to find that the text was repetitive of the video content - the videos were a good length (about 3mins) so just a text intro to the video and links to additional resources would have sufficed (I started to ignore the text after a while)
• The live recordings were way too long. Maybe edit them into several chunks for future course iterations? ie housekeeping/ course requirements, content topic 1, content topic 2, Q&A, showcase
• There was no feedback, and therefore little value, on the survey activities. Were they just a demo? What happens to the data?

Overall I thought the course was well run, and I liked several of the features:

• The facilitators maintained a helpful and friendly presence
• The completion boxes were a really helpful way to keep track of progress
• The books were an effective method to contain content and media
• The demonstration videos were short and sweet, and appropriate for just in time learning
• I liked that the activities were made fun and not too difficult - we were able to focus on the learning objective of the feature use itself - not get stuck on the contribution content
• I loved the opportunity to interact with users from around the globe, and consider Moodle functionality for various purposes

My main feedback for future versions of the course is to consider the needs of the cohort of your learners foremost in mind when designing the course. The course is predominantly full of busy professionals trying to learn Moodle in addition to their work responsibilities, and the course is a large commitment (way more than the 2-3 hours per week advertised).  By enrolling in this course they have demonstrated that they are the future champions for Moodle in their organisations, and they deserve a positive outcome for their efforts.

Videos need to be short, the course content should allow for an extended self-paced option (within reason), assessment deadlines (actual dates) need to be stated /emphasised in week 1 (not announced a few days prior to submission), and the course completion should not be hinged on a single time limited activity with no alternative option to demonstrate learning.

Very disappointing that participants that had put so many hours in to complete every other activity were locked out of the week 3 workshop activity based on a deadline, and therefore had no alternative way to complete the course - completion rates must have been impacted - and I feel for those that joined the course late and would not have been aware that they had no chance of completing (see above 300+ in week 3!). If an assessed activity results in pass/fail of a course, the learning objective should be reflective of the critical skills required. Eg in teaching a Moodle course, I would have thought things like participation in forums, setting up profiles, setting up topics and adding content, manually enrolling users, and generating activity reports would have been crucial skills teachers would need to master as a minimum - workshops are an advanced feature for many Moodle users.